79 years ago: The Dillinger escape

John Dillinger is shown in this undated file photo. In 1934, he escaped from a prison in Indiana and made his way to northern Wisconsin, where he and his gang would have a shootout with police at the Little Bohemia Lodge in Manitowish Waters.

Each Monday, we turn to a day in the newspaper's history for a look at what the Editorial Board found worthy of comment. We will preserve the punctuation and capitalization of the original editorial column. Here is what we wrote on March 5, 1934:

The Dillinger Escape

Speaking of "most embarrassing moments," the woman sheriff and her aides at Crown Point, Indiana, certainly experienced them at the close of last week, when John Dillinger, outlaw, cowed a deputy sheriff with a wooden pistol, and made his escape from a jail where ten deputies were on guard. It is easy, after the event, for the country, and officials in Chicago and elsewhere, to cry aloud over the stupidity or the laxness of the Crown Point jail authorities, and it is indeed a little astounding that a man with the reputation of Dillinger, known to all Indiana as a desperado of the worst sort, should succeed in escaping.

It is quite unbelievable that the outlaw will succeed in getting entirely away. He is too well known, and too many people are on the lookout for him. It is true that many of the people who profess to be eager to encounter the fugitive are hoping their luck will hold, and that they will not find him, but it is almost certain that some pursuer will not only run across him, but that he will be quick on the trigger and a fairly good marksman. The present would seem to be a good time, however, for peace officers in Indiana, Illinois and other nearby states to refrain from much conversation concerning what they will do to Dillinger if they should encounter him. Action, rather than words, will be most appreciated by the law-abiding population of the region where the murderer and robber is at large.

It is still true that the chances are all against Dillinger. He may be swept to death in a blaze of machine gunfire, and he may take a number of peace officers with him as he dies; or it is possible that some "hick officer," somewhere, may eventually surprise him off guard, as they did in Arizona, and effect his peaceable surrender. In any event he is doomed, and the sooner the chase is concluded, the better it will be for the country.

***

It may have been impolite for the sheriff of Racine county to give a "Bronx cheer" for the authorities in Indiana, reminding them that if the Dillinger gang had been returned to Wisconsin they would be safely ensconced in state prison at Waupun by this time; but the temptation to "rub it in" was probably quite irresistible, after the scolding the attorney general of Indiana gave Wisconsin for daring to suggest the return of the hoodlums to Racine for trial, after their capture at Tucson, Arizona.

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79 years ago: The Dillinger escape

Speaking of 'most embarrassing moments,' the woman sheriff and her aides at Crown Point, Indiana, certainly experienced them at the close of last week, when John Dillinger, outlaw, cowed a deputy

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